In silence, we walked to the lift, took it up four floors. Thank goodness no one was in there with us; I don’t think I could have stood that. When the doors slid open with a ping, I decided to lead the way, following the arrows on the oval-shaped brass signs. I wanted Aidan to see that I was as bold as he was. I was doing fine until I had to unlock our room with one of those stupid keycards. The tiny square light kept flashing red, and I got flustered. After my third try failed, my fingers were so slippery I couldn’t even get the card out of the slot. Aidan took over. For him, the light flashed green. We were in.

We stood beside the double bed, looking at each other. ‘So. What now?’ I said.

Aidan shrugged. ‘I suppose we should touch or something.’ I ought to have found it absurd—perhaps laughter would have shattered the tension—but this was the first direct reference either of us had made to the four months of agonised, yearning celibacy that we’d endured. Aidan’s words were enough to pierce the invisible barrier between us. I ran to him and threw myself, hard, at his chest. It was a few seconds—a terrifying chasm that seemed to grow wider and wider—before I felt his arms close around me and I dared to breathe again. We kissed. For more than an hour we did nothing but kiss, standing beside the double bed, with the black hold-all containing our overnight things lying by our feet.

Eventually our lips were throbbing, raw, and we had to stop. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked Aidan.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Better. You?’

‘Still scared.’ Inspired by his bluntness, I thought I’d try the direct approach too. ‘I’m not sure how we get from here to . . . the next stage.’

‘Neither am I,’ he said.

‘How do other couples do it?’ I was thinking: how did I used to do it, with other people? Seventeen others, before Aidan. At one time it had seemed easy. The first time Aidan took me out for dinner, we’d talked about our previous relationships. He told me there had been nothing serious for him, only ‘a lot of futile one-night stands—non-starters, each and every one’.

‘There are no other couples like us,’ he said now. ‘We’ve both known what we’ve got in common from day one, haven’t we? I saw it in your eyes, when I found you on my doorstep last summer. You saw it in my eyes too.’

I nodded mutely. His new-found frankness was making me feel uncomfortable.

‘We’ve both been to Hell and managed to claw our way out. I’ve spent most of my life wanting nothing but to bury what I’ve been through—you seemed to need to do the same.’

‘Aidan, I can’t . . .’